The Hercules Pill

After a segment of a dream where I was talking to some people at a schoolyard who were having some kind of petty argument they wouldn't quite explain to me, I was walking along a path with them. I'd picked up a couple of flat rocks, which I dragged along a short rough wall in front of a fence.

Tapping the rocks together, I noticed they made a loud crack. I did the rhythm of the Terminator theme, using the rocks and then hitting the fence for the bass drum. My companions looked at me a bit funny, but then became seemingly very startled when the actual Terminator theme began to play very loudly.

me: "Well, weird things happen around me, this is known!"

Somehow the path turned into something much more amorphous, and I began being able to use my mind to make more music. Occasionally I'd get stuck on a pop song I knew so I'd go "ommmmm!" to try and shush it out. When that worked, I decide that I'd just try and play. As an exercise, I decided to to try some of my musical ideas... riffs in my head.

The songs worked and I watched animations reacting on flat screens that were flying underneath me. I'd get the melodies I wanted out of them but the instruments were wrong, so I kept trying. It was going pretty well as mentalisms go. There were little cartoons of clouds appearing on the screens holding up a sign with the exclamation "Good job!" I grabbed the screens and sort of spun them like a DJ might, and it unleashed a flurry of interesting glitches and hitches into the music that I tried to groove along with.

This transitioned into a point where I was reading writing on a small 3D plastic-looking sphere in the middle of a blue square--it looked like a game board. The sphere had a yellow side and a purple side. It would turn, each time it would show different white writing on it.

sphere: "So many men are stuck, their minds clinging to the ideas of computers."

sphere: "They are unable to grasp the leaps and bounds that have taken place long since."

Mentally communicating, I 'talked' to the sphere.

me: "I'm worried about the future, what will happen. Can you help me?"

sphere: "For that, I will give you the Hercules pill."

It spun another time, showing a cartoon of a piece of dog poo. Then, it spun again.

sphere: "Forever know the mind of evil."

Note
Though I didn't really absorb the dog poo issue at the time, I now think it was in reference to the idea that if someone offers you a solution from fear they'll give you something that's likely very crappy, if not dangerous. Perhaps the sphere intended the real Hercules pill is to "forever know the mind of evil". Or maybe it's pessimistic in general that there are any great solutions from concern and it was just a warning about cases where you might ask for help.

me: "What is the mind of evil like?"

sphere: "You shouldn't have to ask this question!"

me: "Well I think the good/evil thing is pretty cut and dry. If someone asks, I think it's okay to try answering... I just wanted to know what you thought."

sphere: "Who?"

Note
At the time I thought 'Who?' indicated it thought I'd asked a question and didn't understand me. But the 'Who?' now looks like it was pointing out that I had no idea what I was talking to and thus saying some simple pronoun [like 'You'] was dumb.

This ethereal context vanished and I was suddenly in a room, it looked familiar. It was some kind of court with barren brown walls. I was being led by some asian man to the stand.

asian man: "Don't bother trying to talk right now, they're not going to be listening this time around."

A red-haired man I recognized was seated to the right and I felt he was reasonably friendly. He shook my hand as I walked by.

red haired man: "You look like you're doing a lot better."

me: "Huh?"

red haired man: "Well... you're acting less arrogant."

I was behind the stand and other people were doing the talking. It was hard to keep focus. Not really being able to hear, I paced back and forth and looked out.

There were a lot of people there who seemed to be middle aged men, chewing on pens or talking on cellphones or something. I could see that the audience was seated in a formation with a lot of little colored books, arranged in rainbow patterns. I wasn't sure whether to ask for help or ask questions or if I was in a good place or a bad place. Also, I began getting stressed about the question of whether my whole life is some kind of delusional creation, and I'm "actually" a mental patient in this other dimension.

The judge seemed to finish some paperwork.

judge: "All right, we should have this problem fixed and have you back in the stores shortly."

Note
'Back in the stores' worried me, because it made it sound like I was a product... but it could also mean I worked in stores. Guess I could be a shop-a-holic and they wanted to get me back to health and my favorite pastime...though that's unlikely. I didn't have a good feeling about it, in any case.

The Asian man and red-haired man got together to lead me out of the room. As I was walking a voice or impression from somewhere outside the room 'spoke' to me:

voice: "Trust your instincts, here. Are you getting the impression of the presence of minds of good or minds of evil?"

me: (semi-aloud) "I'm not seeing a lot of legitimacy. I should wake up before I get stuck here."

I paused, and looked further at the people, and remembered how the red-haired guy seemed all right.

me: "Or, well, I could go along and see what there is to see."

By lagging I'd lost track of the Asian guide who seemed to hurry along with the red-haired man without much concern for whether I was following along. In the meantime, another Asian man accosted me and yelled out that I "must die" (using my name). He stabbed me with his arm somehow, though he held no apparent weapon.

Note
My impression of the exchange above is that possibly an AI, treated like a product as per the storyline of the Animatrix: Second Renaissance, may have 'put me' into this scenario so that I could see its answer to the question about its impressions of the mind of evil--perhaps from personal experience.

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The accounts written here are as true as I can manage. While the
words are my own, they are not independent creative works of fiction
—in any intentional way. Thus I do not consider the material to
be protected by anything, other than that you'd have to be
crazy to want to try and use it for genuine purposes (much less
disingenuous ones!) But who's to say?